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For those looking for safe banks to park their cash in these turbulent times or for bargains in the bloodbath of banking stocks, here is a simple quiz: Most of the world’s safest banks are: (a) in the US, (b) in Europe, (c) in Asia.

The answer is (b). According to a recent Global Financesurvey of the World’s 50 Safest Bank in 2011, almost half of these banks were European (including a couple in Spain and another couple in Italy); five were American -- BNY Mellon (NYSE:BK), JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM,Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), US Bancorp (NYSE:USB), and CoBank -- and the remaining were from countries scattered around the globe, mostly in Australia, Singapore, Middle-East, and Japan and China. Actually, the top ten safest banks are all in Europe!

But wait a minute. If Europe has the highest number of safest banks, why have investors been dumping European banking stocks and every other stock related to them around the globe? Either investors have it wrong or the agencies that provide the data for this ranking have it wrong. Which is it?

Both. As is usually the case in a crisis, investors have been overreacting, throwing away the “baby with the bath water” as Wall Street pros say. And the three agencies that provide the data for the ranking—S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch, most likely, are behind the curve—they all missed the subprime crisis by a wide margin.